Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Health 2006
Lao PDR, 2006
Identification
LAO_2006_PETSH_v01_M
Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Health 2006
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Lao PDR | LAO |
Public Expenditure Tracking Survey
A Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) is a diagnostic tool used to study the flow of public funds from the center to service providers. It has successfully been applied in many countries around the world where public accounting systems function poorly or provide unreliable information. The PETS has proven to be a useful tool to identify and quantify the leakage of funds. The PETS has also served as an analytical tool for understanding the causes underlying problems, so that informed policies can be developed. Finally, PETS results have successfully been used to improve transparency and accountability by supporting "power of information" campaigns.
PETS are often combined with Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS) in order to obtain a more complete picture of the efficiency and equity of a public allocation system, activities at the provider level, as well as various agents involved in the process of service delivery.
While most of PETS and QSDS have been conducted in the health and education sectors, a few have also covered other sectors, such as justice, Early Childhood Programs, water, agriculture, and rural roads.
In the past decade, about 40 PETS and QSDS have been implemented in about 30 countries. While a large majority of these surveys have been conducted in Africa, which currently accounts for 66 percent of the total number of studies, PETS/QSDS have been implemented in all six regions of the World Bank (East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa).
The Lao PDR Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) Project, a partnership between the Government of Lao PDR and the World Bank, was carried out from January 31 to March 11, 2006. The project analyzed the flow of funds in country's primary education and primary health sectors.
In Lao PDR, the fiscal structure is highly decentralized. Provinces and districts are responsible for delivering basic social services to households.
This survey explored the impact of public expenditure management and human resources on education and health service delivery by:
- documenting financial and human resources at subnational levels;
- tracking salary payments from districts to facilities;
- correlating performance with actual service delivery;
- proposing policy reforms on expenditure management practices.
Documented here is the research analyzing flow of resources in Lao PDR primary health sector. One hundred and seven health centers in 17 provinces were covered by the PETS. The study sample was based on health facilities in villages surveyed in 2002-2003 Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey (LECS).
Sample survey data [ssd]
- Province Health Offices;
- District Health Bureaus;
- Health Centers.
Scope
| Topic | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| Health | World Bank |
| Health Systems & Financing | World Bank |
Coverage
17 provinces
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Ministry of Finance | |
| Ministry of Health | |
| Department of Public Administration | Prime Minister’s Office |
| National Statistics Centre | |
| World Bank |
Sampling
The PETS sample was based on schools and health centers in villages surveyed by the 2002-2003 Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey (LECS). One operational advantage of this sampling was that National Statistics Centre was familiar with the location and village representatives. An analytical advantage of this sampling design was that this PETS was derived from a nationally representative household survey that covered 17 out of 18 provinces and 56 out of the 141 districts. In contrast, most PETS take place in selected areas of a country to conserve spending on the cost of field work. As of 2003, there were 717 health centers in Lao PDR. Based on this number and the experience of other PETS surveys, the target number of health centers was 114. The target was off by seven clinics.
According to their financial status in the 2003-2004 Official Gazatte, five provinces, Borikhamxay, Champasak, Luangnamtha, Savanakhet, and Vientiane Capital were considered surplus provinces; the remaining 12 were considered deficit provinces. Within provinces, there are 143 districts. Of these, 47 were priority districts in need of public investments to attain their poverty reduction targets. These 47 districts were identified based on a set of household, village, and district level indicators for basic minimum needs. Of the 56 districts in the survey, 10 were priority districts and 46 - non-priority districts.
Of the 107 health centers covered by the survey, 33 were in urban areas, 74 in rural areas; 71 in non-poor areas, 36 in poor areas, and 91 in Lao-Tai areas, and 16 in non Lao-Tai areas.
Survey instrument
Three survey instruments were used to collect the data:
-
The district level questionnaire recorded resources that were allocated to primary schools and health centers and tracked the funds for salary payments from the district to facility levels.
-
The facility level questionnaire collected detailed information about inputs, including public funds, outputs and outcomes for primary schools and health centers.
-
The community level questionnaire was a scaled-down version of the village questionnaire from 2002-2003 Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey. The questionnaire recorded community characteristics.
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2006-01 | 2006-03 |
Data gathering process was complicated by weaknesses in financial control, accounting, and reporting systems in Lao PDR health sector. Documentation was almost entirely paper-based. Formats and nomenclatures were often inconsistent. Records were kept in various books and rarely reconciled.
Some respondents at the facility, district, and provincial levels were unfamiliar with accounting. For example, some individual responses to questions about financial surpluses and deficits were inconsistent with their responses to other sections of questionnaires. These responses reflected a lack of understanding of basic accounting principles, such as revenues and expenditures. These concepts are pivotal for a public expenditure tracking study. The fact that some respondents failed to grasp these principles undermined the scope and depth of the study analysis.
Data Access
Public Use File
Use of the survey data must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the identification of the Primary Investigator (including country name)
- the full title of the survey and its acronym (when available), and the year(s) of implementation
- the survey reference number.
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Hooman Dabidian | World Bank | hdabidian@worldbank.org |
| Cindy Audiguier | World Bank | caudiguier@worldbank.org |
Metadata production
DDI_LAO_2006_PETSH_v01_M
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Antonina Redko | DECDG, World Bank | DDI documentation |
2011-09-28
Metadata version
v01 (September 2011)